I moved from Belgium to the USA a long time ago, and there's a few
foods I really miss. There's the obvious things, like decent bread
(What the HECK is up with bread and pastries in general in the USA?),
doner kebab, and decent french fries. But another less obvious thing
is pancakes. You see, the understanding of what a pancake is and
should be is very different in Belgium and the United States. In the
US, pancakes are thicker and smaller in diameter. Ours are a lot more
thin and typically the size of a full size plate. Kind of like french
crepes, but not quite, still a little thicker than those, and we do
use eggs. So it's sort of in between I guess. I do not like the way
they are made in America. They kind of taste like eating a sponge.
But, I guess the sponge-y nature exists for a reason, which is to
soak up all the syrup Americans like to drown them in. Which is
another thing we don't use traditionally. A traditional Belgian
pancake is served with brown sugar and rolled up into a cigar-like
shape. Yes, restaurants now serve all kinds of fancy crap, like
pancakes with strawberries, whipped cream, even Nutella and all sorts
of crazy stuff. But that is not the way our traditional pancakes are
done, and I still like the traditional pancakes the best personally.
Anyway, here's how you make them:
Ingredients
Belgian pancakes are actually really simple. And the art is, imho, in
keeping it simple. There's only 3 main ingredients: Milk, Eggs, flour
- you can optionally add some vanilla-sugar (which for some reason is
unobtainium in the USA, so alternatively you can add vanilla extract
and some regular white sugar, but be very careful to not add too much
sugar. - more on that below)
Mixing the dough
The most important thing is the flour and eggs. Those are really the
only ingredients that need to be measured out somewhat. So start with
them. The ratio is roughly 100g flour for every egg. So 300g flour,
is 3 eggs - You don't want too much flour, or they will fall apart.
You also don't want too much egg, or they will taste egg-y (which is
gross). The milk you can sort of eye-ball, as you're mixing, just add
more until you get the consistency you want. More milk means you'll
get thinner pancakes. That's what we want. As such, the consistency
of the dough should be a lot more liquid than what you'd normally
have for American pancakes. After that you can mix in the extra, but
optional stuff, like the vanilla(-sugar) and/or sugar. Adding in some
sugar gives it a bit of extra flavour but it also gives the pancakes
some more (brown) texture, as the sugar will caramelize. If you add
too much, your pancakes will burn very easily. So only add a tiny
bit, if you do at all! You can also mix in some drops of vanilla-
extract if you can't find any vanilla-sugar packets. You can mix with
a whisk. Personally I usually just use the whisk attachment on an
electric hand-mixer. Make sure you whisk it good until all the clumps
of flour are gone.
Frying pan and temperature
Pick a frying pan that is exactly the size of the pancakes you want.
Like I said, our pancakes are typically bigger, so a normal-sized
frying pan should be about right and give you pancakes that are the
size of a regular plate. A lot of people find that the first pancake
of a batch usually fails. That's because people often don't start
with a hot enough pan. You'll want to pre-heat your frying pan for a
while, before you even put butter in it. The correct temperature is
about hot enough to just not burn your butter. You don't want it to
actually burn your butter, but it should be hot enough that it's
close to that point.
Pouring the dough
This step is kind of important. When you're ready to pour the dough,
put some butter in the pan. Don't put the butter in the pan way ahead
of time, because your butter will burn, and that's obviously bad. Do
stir the butter around the pan a bit, such that it covers the edges
nicely, this will ensure everything is lubricated enough for flipping
the pancake. You definitively don't want it to stick to the pan when
flipping, because that will ruin it pretty quick. Then pour the dough
either straight from the mixing bowl or with a latle, into the center
of the frying pan. A lot of people will rotate the pan to try and get
the dough to distribute thinly. - Don't do that. - It will ruin the
texture. Instead, make sure to pour enough dough, such that the dough
is about one inch to half an inch from the edges of the pan, and then
it should spread out to fill the remainder on it's own. If it doesn't
then that's a sign that your dough isn't liquid enough, so you should
mix in some more milk into it (you can still do that at this stage).
It's important to get the initial pour right and as good as possible
for a nice thin but round pancake, because we really don't want to
manipulate the dough after pouring. Avoid shaking the pan or touching
the cooking pancake at all, because you'll be messing with the air
contents and/or texture if you do so. Just don't touch it again until
it's ready to flip.
Flipping and finish cooking
So when is it ready to flip? Well, as the pancake cooks, it will
start forming little bubbles, and dry out on top. Once the top looks
mostly dry with bubbles, that's when you can flip it. A lot of people
like to flip it by flicking the pan. I don't really use this method
for 2 reasons: 1) I've seen it go wrong too many times ;) There's a
lot of people with stories of pancakes on the floor, or even ceiling.
2) the pancake falling back into the pan displaces a lot of the dough
on the bottom and may knock out some of the air we want to keep in
the pancake. - Instead, I first gently shake the pan a bit, and make
sure the pancake is moving (if it isn't, you probably didn't use
enough butter) - then gently slide a spatula underneath it, and flick
the pan and the spatula at the same time. It's kind of like flicking
it, but in a more controlled, guided way, with speedbrakes. :)
Give it a few more minutes on the other side. The second side is
usually done quicker. Slide it onto a plate. Now move on to the next
pancake. :)
Serving
For every pancake:
- pour some brown sugar on it, and spread it over the whole
pancake using a utensil.
- Roll it up until it looks like a cigar.
Conclusion
One thing I find really interesting about pancakes, is that so many
countries have their own traditional regional variants. They are all
slightly different. Back when I still lived in Belgium, a few houses
down lived a friend and his family, they were from Cameroon, and
their version of crepes included lemon zest, which is weird initially
but really grew on me -haha. They'd make huge stacks of them quite
frequently.
I know it's kind of unusual for me to phlog a food recipe, but I got
weirdly nostalgic for our traditional pancakes lately, as an ex of
my mom who used to make stacks of pancakes for me back in the day has
recently passed away of asbestos related lung cancer, and since my
wife was hungry for some, I made us some this "morning" (more like
afternoon because we woke up at 2pm heeeeee)
